hold-up

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   A delay or wait.

   • What is the hold-up?
2. 2

   A robbery at gunpoint.

   • This is a hold-up! Give us all your money.
   • They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children or die summarily by some other act of God.
3. 3

   The holding back of a card that could win a trick in order to use it later.

   • This was another hand on which a holdup caused declarer to lose control and to go down in a sensational way: […]
   • In a holdup, a player delays taking a trick until opponents' entries are reduced.
4. ›+ 3 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      Women's stockings designed to be worn without suspenders.

   2. 5

      The inventory of nuclear material within a separation plant.

      • And to the left is a portable gamma counter that tells us the holdup of plutonium recovery facilities.
      • During process operations and temporary shutdown, the holdup within the facility is also known as the in-process inventory.
   3. 6

      A traffic jam.

The neighborhood